Correcting an Underexposed Image in Lightroom

Everyone overexposes an occasional photo. You might do it deliberately, in order to convey a certain mood, but more often than not it's an accident and you won't like the result. Martin Evening shows how to use Lightroom to fix those images on which you got a little carried away.

Underexposed images are a big problem because few levels are available to
manipulate, particularly in the shadows. You can use the Basic panel controls in
Lightroom to brighten an image and lift out the shadow detail—but
it’s important that you work through the Basic image adjustments in the
correct order.

When adjusting the tones in an underexposed photograph, the Blacks adjustment
can be very sensitive. A small shift of the Blacks slider can make a huge
difference. In the following example, I could have opened the shadows more by
setting the Blacks slider to 1 or 2. But by choosing 4, I was able to preserve
more of the overall contrast.

Corrections for underexposed images like the one in Figure 1 should be done
mainly by adjusting the Exposure slider first to set the highlight clipping.
This should be followed by an adjustment to the Blacks, and then an adjustment
to the Brightness and Contrast.

Dragging the Exposure slider to the right enabled me to preserve all the
information in the highlights.

I adjusted the Blacks so that the shadows were just clipped.

I used the Fill Light adjustment to lighten the dark shadow areas
radically.

I used the Brightness and Contrast sliders to lighten the midtones further
and add more contrast depth.

Figure 2 shows the result. For best results when correcting an overexposure,
always approach the Basic controls in the order I’ve just described.

CAUTION

Be sure to adjust the Exposure slider after adjusting the Brightness
slider. Although you can achieve similar results by doing it the other way
around, you’ll end up stretching the shadow tones far more than is good
for the image.